In 1993 Slovakia became a country after being part of Czechoslovakia for 74 years. The country is located at the north western end of the Carpathian Mountains which forms a physical barrier between Poland and Hungary. The southwestern part of the country is lowland. The population is about 5.5 million people and the country is approximately 49,035 square kilometers (18,932 square miles) in size.

We entered Slovakia from Austria on our BMW motorcycles during our adventure motorcycle travels at the one crossing between to two countries at Berg, southwest of Bratislava. We found that Tesco has a strong position in Slovakia with giant super stores in every large metropolitan area, just like they do in Hungary. We were delighted to find the roads to be in good condition with restaurants and hotels and motels widely available throughout the country. Campgrounds are available but we did not find any with showers. The capital is Bratislava and we enjoyed our time in Bratislava but, as usual for us, we really enjoyed ourselves once we were out of the big city and in the mountains - specifically the Carpathian Mountains which have their northern most range as a physical barrier between Slovakia and Poland before they turn to the south through the Ukraine and into Romania. We quickly discovered yet another language that we were not going to understand. Fortunately we found many people who understood some English but there were a few times were communication was difficult, at best.

About one third of the county is used by agriculture and it looked like agribusiness was doing very well with huge fields of sun flowers, wheat, corn, pepper and alfalfa everywhere. Our tour book said that most of the farm land is owned by the people who farm the land in the form of huge cooperatives - a result of the communist days when all individual land ownership ceased.

We enjoyed out time in Slovakia and recommend it as a place to visit for anyone traveling in Eastern Europe.

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